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tv   CNN Newsroom With John Berman and Poppy Harlow  CNN  October 30, 2017 7:00am-8:00am PDT

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good morning, everyone. >> conspiracy against the united states, money laundering, false statements, those are some of a dozen charges in all facing president trump's former campaign chairman paul manafort and his longtime business partner rick gates. you see the two walking into fbi headquarters this morning. >> these are the first charges. the first criminal defendants in the special counsel robert mueller's investigation into me investigation. this does not mention the campaign or the white house. both men played key roles in the campaign. both men turned themselves into the fbi in washington this morning. they'll head to a federal courthouse in just a bit.
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we will see that happen. let's start with evan perez who has broken so much of this story. evan, to you. >> we expect that both these men will be here at the federal courthouse in the coming hours where they're going to have their first appearance before a federal judge. there are 12 counts. all of it having to do with paul manafort and rick gates' work for the former ruling party in ukraine. this was a party viewed as being pro-russia during the time they were in power. and a lot of the 12 counts in this indictment have to do with failure to register a foreign agent for the ukrainian government and failure to tell the irs that they had bank accounts. millions of dollars that flowed through these bank accounts in places like cypress and st. vincent and nothing as you mentioned -- nothing here mentioning the 2016 election. nothing mentioning the campaign, which i suppose people at the
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white house are going to be very pleased about because they're going to say that this really has to do with things that are old. things that are in the past having to do with paul manafort's work for the ukrainian government. now, we expect that this is only the beginning. this is not the end of this. what happens often in these cases is that prosecutors file these indictments and then they have the ability to continue the investigation, continue to gather facts and then do a superseding indictment with additional information. we don't know what else bob mugmug -- mueller and his team have come up with. we know the 12 counts mentioned here, it really has to do with work that goes back as far back as 2006 that paul manafort and rick gates did for the ukrainian government who was a client of theirs for many years. >> all right. evan perez, we're waiting for that moment for them to be transported there to the courthouse. thank you for all of the reporting. evan part of the team that broke
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this news this morning. let's talk more about who these men are and how integral they were in the president's campaign and a lot more. with us now, our chief political correspondent dana bash. let's start with paul manafort. that's the name people know better. both important when it comes to trump world. let's go through manafort first. >> paul manafort was officially in the campaign for not that long of a period of time but he was there at a critical, critical juncture. you see on the screen there he was chairman from may of 2016 to august 2016. and he came on really as somebody who was suggested, we understand, by the president's longtime friend who said you need somebody to help navigate the delegate process at the convention. it's hard to manaimagine now, bf you go back in time, the trump
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campaign was concerned about a revolt at the republican convention so paul manafort and his deputy, rick gates, were brought on initially for that to try to manage the delegate situation and make sure that all -- the number of delegates that he needed to actually clinch the nomination went through, and it did. it did. so paul manafort was kind of the chair at that point and manafort then because the new president and really his children pushed out cory li, manafort became th effective head of the campaign. it ended because of stories we're talking about. there were stories extensive about paul manafort's ties to ukraine and russia and toward the end of august after the republican national convention
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that the president fired paul manafort. it was a short period of time but a very important period of time that manafort was there. >> as for rick gates, his relationship with paul manafort goes back years and years and the transition extended beyond paul manafort. >> that's exactly right. as you see on the screen there, he was the deputy to paul manafort, but he came on with manafort because the two of them had worked so long together so extensively in the private sector. and what was most interesting is that when manafort was fired, rick gates stayed on. if you talk to people -- i remember doing this realtime during the convention and then afterwards, a lot of people at the republican national committee who were working hand in glove with the trump campaign and those in and around the trump campaign, they said rick gates was a very, very important guy. he kept trains running on time.
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he got things done. very much behind the scenes but really critically important to the trump campaign at that particular time. and while manafort was fired, he stayed on and not just that. he stayed on even in the trump world after the campaign. he was hired by the chair of the inaugural committee to effectively do the same job. get things done during the inauguration. after that, he was hired to help run the president's pac. outside political action committee. the political arm that started right after donald trump was inaugurated, and again, he was fired from that in the spring of this year because of ongoing stories about rick gates's ties to ukraine and russia through manafort. these were two important figures in the trump world. manafort for a much shorter period of time and rick gates,
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much, much more behind the scenes. >> remember when you hear the white house spin separating them. separating the campaign from these two figures. while they were there, they were major players. dana bash, thank you so much for that context. let's get over to jessica snyder. she's at the federal courthouse where both men will be arriving shortly. what will the process be? >> reporter: we know now when both men will appear in court before a judge. it will happen at 1:30 this afternoon. that's when both paul manafort and rick gates will go before a federal magistrate judge for that initial appearance. the arraignment, if you will. right now both of those men are still at the fbi field office just a few blocks from here. we know that paul manafort arrived around 8:00 this morning. rick gates shortly thereafter. they've been processed. that includes the booking, the photographs, the fingerprints. after that has concluded and when they're ready to be transported here to the federal courthouse, they will in fact be taken by federal authorities here to the district court. they'll be held here until that
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court appearance. again at 1:30 this afternoon. in the court appearance, the charges against them in this lengthy 31-page indictment with 12 different counts, those will all be laid out for them. also, what they can expect for maximum criminal penalty. i've been speaking with federal prosecutors not directly involved in this case but that do deal with criminal matters in district court. they tell me the judge will determine whether or not to detain both defendants, both men, or release them. there's a number of factors that can be considered in whether or not to detain criminal defendants in federal cases like this. however, it is likely considering that this is a white collar criminal case involving money laundering and also lying to federal prosecutors about their foreign agents status, it is likely that the judge would release them possibly with several considerations about as to whether or not they have to surrendering this passports. as to whether or not they have to main staintain a curfew.
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that will happen at 1:30 this afternoon. in the meantime, we wait for both men to be transported by federal authorities from the fbi field office right here to court. back to you. >> jessica schneider, thank you for that. let's go to the white house now. we have learned that the president has been briefed on these charges. what else do we know? >> reporter: that's right. the president has been briefed by his legal team at the white house here. we hear that we're not likely to get a statement from the legal team on this until they can go through the full scope of these charges. other than that, we have no official comment from the white house so far on this. all we have so far is several white house officials on background attempting to distance themselves from paul manafort, from robert gates, and from these charges telling several people on the cnn white house team that these charges have nothing to do with the white house, nothing to do with the trump campaign, and one
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person actually told my colleague these guys were bad guys when they started. they were bad guys when they left. and they added this has nothing to do with russia. but we know that the president has met with his legal team. they've gone over these charges. but just to remind everyone, paul manafort is someone who was hired by the trump campaign back in march. then he was promoted to campaign chairman in may, and he did not resign until mid august. so he is someone who was around the campaign for some time. we actually last heard the president comment on paul manafort in august. that was after the fbi had raided paul manafort's virginia home and president told reporters at his golf course in new jersey that he thought the raid signalled something very serious. he had always known paul manafort to be a decent man and he knew he had fees coming in and out of places but above all he said he thought he was a decent person. it's not likely we'll hear from the white house until later this
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afternoon. the press secretary is scheduled to brief reporters at 1:00 here. we'll keep you updated on any comment from the white house on these charges. >> all right. thank you so much. i do want to bring our viewers more color that we just got from gloria borger. a source close to the president acknowledging, yes, president has been briefed on this and he will likely say later that he feels badly for paul manafort and his family but this has nothing to do with us or the campaign. >> which this indictment as of now does not. however, the investigation of robert mueller might have a lot to do with the campaign. so stay tuned. we're following all these major breaking developments as paul manafort and rick gates face charges. a 12-count indictment. they go to the courthouse very shortly. stick around. ♪
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that just tastes better. with more vitamins. and 25% less saturated fat. only eggland's best. better taste. better nutrition. better eggs. back with our breaking news. two men you see on your screen, paul manafort, rick gates, two men very close to the trump campaign for a significant period of time have been charged with 12 counts. very serious counts including conspiracy against the united states, money laundering, et cetera. with us, cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. thank you all for being here. jeffrey toobin to you. these are people high up and important to trump world as we heard from dana bash and our team. the thinking also is, well, is this an effort to flip one or
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both of them. to get them to cooperate to get to something bigger. >> certainly in a major white collar investigation, the first charges are almost always against people that the prosecutor hopes will plead guilty and then cooperate against others. rick gates in particular tomorrow could virtually guarantee himself no prison time if he were to flip and cooperate. now, there are problems with flipping and cooperating starting with the fact that you may have nothing to offer against other people. you may -- >> that they don't already have. >> that they don't already have or you just are unaware of other criminal activity. but the federal criminal -- the federal law enforcement offers tremendous benefits to people who plead and cooperate. sammy admitted to killing 19 people and he got five years in prison after he cooperated. i mean, that's how the system
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works. certainly these two defendants who are well represented by counsel, the counsel will be telling them that. they may say, look, i'm not guilty of anything. i'm not cooperating. they say i may be guilty but i don't want to cooperate. there are major incentives to cooperating in the federal system. >> you have been inside these investigations working through the fbi and as a lawyer. as you look at this right now, as you look at these charges before us, what do they tell you? >> they tell me a couple things, john. right now we don't see the direct tie between trump and russia but this is creeping closer to the white house. we have these two campaign officials who do have ties with russia. we have a conspiracy charge here and a conspiracy charge is going to allow the government to potentially expand the scope of who might have been involved with that connection.
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i would also say that this criminal indictment needs to be looked at against the backdrop of the counterintelligence investigation. i want to highlight two different things. the first is what we know about the warrants on manafort. what is listed in the indictment now all of his activities on behalf of ukraine, presumably formed a large basis and may have been the result of information gleaned from the first fisa that was on him. we know that ended and then there was another fisa that went up on him for his ties with russia directly. so what i would say is that there might have been information gained from those fisas that we don't necessarily see here that could be building the quote/unquote collusion case. the other thing is the role that manafort played in coordinating with kremlin and election
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interference. that's raw intelligence. we don't know how much of it is true. it makes sense that mueller would use that and try to verify as much of it and maybe these why he needs manafort to start talking. >> can i just expand on a point. i think it's a very important one. why was paul manafort involved in this campaign? who is he? why is he involved? what this indictment lays out is that he was making millions of dollars from the russia backed party in the ukraine. he is someone who was doing vladimir putin's bidding in ukraine. he then becomes the campaign chairman for donald trump. who is he working for? what side is he on? i mean, it is consistent with a campaign that was highly simple
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th -- sympathetic to russia. >> you will remember that the platform toward ukraine changed to be more submympathetic to russia. there are vehicles going -- don't know if that's anything. >> maybe someone was in that that we care about. we'll get back to you. >> as someone that worked with bob mueller, your thoughts this morning. count one of this indictment is that manafort and gates generated tens of millions of dollars over a decade from ukraine and hid those payments from the government of the united states. >> that's right. he engaged in a money laundering conspiracy. so when i was special counsel to mueller at the justice department, my mandate was money laundering. this is pretty much what we did. this is pretty much blocking and tackling. there are two statutes that are raised here. title 18 1956 which has international money laundering provision which you see
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allegations of money coming to the u.s. and buying properties using shell corporations to disguise the true ownership of that money. manafort and his partner. you see domestic money laundering under 1956 as well, which is money laundering intended to evade the requirements of the tax law and conceal the source of the money. you have things under title 31 of the federal code which be foreign financial account reporting requirements. they require people who earn more than $10,000 in cash or currency or any other form of payment overseas that has a bank account there to report that money and these guys didn't do that in successive years. they laundered the proceeds of money from outside the u.s. inside the u.s. they laundered the money in the
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u.s. with the attempt to evade taxes and promote their underline scheme. they failed to report on accounts overseas and they failed to register as foreign agents and make truthful statements about those foreign agent registrations. this is a pretty big deal from an investigative standpoint. it's a very well constructed indictment. the thing about the indictment, too, is that this type of behavior is the type of behavior that reporting in the media has made with respect to flynn and the flynn intel group. you may see a mirror indictment with respect to flynn and his intel group for these type of charges. if you see this and you're flynn, you might be thinking like jeffrey said, how do i incentivize the government to think lightly about me and maybe it's flynn that this indictment sends a message to to start
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cooperating. the last thing i wanted to say is in the 21st paragraph of this indictment, it does say that manafort wants information from company a and b, the two other consulting firms so that the president can be briefed on this. so there is a direct reference to the president. i assume that's the president of the united states. and as was reported, this lobbying on behalf of ukraine did find its way into a watered down plank at the convention. so to say that it has no touch points to the campaign or president trump may be an overstatement. >> we'll take a look at that. it could refer to the president of ukraine. we take your point there. the other point that a lot of folks and lawyers in washington are looking at this indictment and looking to see what bob mueller is doing and wondering if they might be next and how they might mitigate that. >> they say a lot of these
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counts, manafort and gates together with others. >> thank you so much. let's get to jeff at the white house. he is getting more information about what's going on there. jeff? >> reporter: good morning. i'm actually in our washington bureau. we are talking to people inside the white house today who are discussing their meetings with the president. one question, of course, hanging over all of this is will the president renew his call to fire the special counsel? robert mueller has made his displeasure at this investigation no secret, of course. he's been trying to discredit the investigation. we're told the president is not going to renew his call to fire the special counsel at all. in the words of one official, that would undercut the argument of the white house. the thinking here is this. the white house is saying, in fact, the president believes this has nothing to do with him. that's their line of thinking. so by simply calling for the firing of special counsel bob mueller, it would in one respect offer democrats and critics something that they are hoping
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to seize on so the white house is staying far away from that. the president staying far away from any direct criticism of the special counsel. >> jeff zeleny, thank you for the reporting. we're waiting for a verbal statement from the president of the house. we know the president is speaking directly. the president just writing moments ago on twitter. sorry but this is years ago before paul manafort was part of the trump campaign but why aren't crooked hillary and the dems the focus. he says this was years ago. jeffrey toobin, the years are 2006 to 2017. >> it's just not true. the president obviously can tweet what he wants. the indictment itself -- you don't have to interpret the indictment. you only have to read the indictment to see that it says the conspiracy goes during precisely the time he was -- manafort and gates were working for the trump campaign.
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with respect to the president, he's just simply wrong. >> stick around. we have a lot more to talk about including more breaking news. the possibility that someone else is now charged or at least pleaded in this investigation. we'll have much more on that straight ahead. a heart attack doesn't care what you eat or how healthy you look. no matter who you are, a heart attack can happen without warning. a bayer aspirin regimen can help prevent another heart attack. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. bayer aspirin.
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throughout history, the one meal when we come together, break bread, share our day and connect as a family. [ bloop, clicking ] and connect, as a family. just, uh one second voice guy. [ bloop ] huh? hey? i paused it. bam, family time. so how is everyone? find your awesome with xfinity xfi and change the way you wifi. we have more breaking news for you this morning. we're reporting that paul manafort and rick gates surrounding to authorities today. a 12-count indictment against them stemming from the russian meddling investigation by special counsel robert mueller. we learned that someone else, that would mean a third person, has already pleaded guilty to
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something connected with this. let's get to cnn justice correspondent evan perez. evan, what do we know? what's going on here? >> well, john, now we have information on george papadopolous who pleaded guilty in lying to the fbi. we have the first indictment from mueller that has some connection to the 2016 presidential campaign. papadopolous admits he lied when he was asked about contacts to russia. in particular, there was some conversations back in march of 2016 shortly after he had joined the trump campaign and he was in contact with a professor from russia who according to the fbi has close ties with the russian government. and according to this information that he now admits, he says that this meeting was
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about promises from the russian government to possessing dirt on hillary clinton in particular about thousands of e-mails that they said they had. again, this professor who is not named in these documents was in touch with george papadopolous shortly before he became -- shortly after he joined the trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser and that timing is important. it says according to the documents that the russians knew and they were trying to use his connections to the trump campaign in order to try to get access to the campaign. there's also a mention of contacts and communications with a woman also who was connected to the russian government. again, the whole purpose of this was trying to make inroads. the russian government was trying to make inroads to the trump campaign and it appears they were trying to use george papadopolous to do that. he's a former foreign policy
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adviser to the trump campaign and he pleaded guilty on november 3rd to giving false statements to the fbi. >> evan perez with more breaking news for us outside of the courthouse where we're waiting for manafort and gates. jeffrey toobin is back. gloria borger is also here. so president trump according to "the washington post" called this man papadopolous an energy consultant and an excellent guy. this is also a guy who at least six times according to "the washington post" tried to set up meetings between top campaign officials on the trump team and russians and now he's admitted according to evan's reporting and to what we have here, the paperwork, that he lied about the timing and extent and nature of his relationship and interactions with certain foreign national governments with close connections to senior russian officials. >> this is enormously significant. this is a guilty plea coming out of the trump campaign directly.
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the president tweeted earlier this morning that manafort's financial crimes -- alleged financial crimes took place before he was involved with the trump campaign. that's incorrect. in fact, they are alleged to have continued while he was with the trump campaign. they are financial crimes not directly related to the trump campaign. this is a felony guilty plea about activities in the trump campaign regarding russia so this goes directly to mueller's mandate to investigate collusion between the trump campaign and russia. i mean, we're going to have to parse exactly what he pleaded guilty to, but it was related to the trump campaign and russia. that's what it was about. >> gloria borger, i want to bring you into this. the white house, we don't know if they had this information when they started spin this morning about paul manafort and
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rick gates. go ahead. >> what they will say is that paul manafort turned down all these meetings and that these meetings were offered by papadopolous but that is never amounted to anything. i'm just saying in advance that's what they're going to say. >> again, you have much more on the disposition inside the west wing this morning. what the president is saying about this. how he feels about it and what he might say publicly beyond these tweets saying what paul manafort did a million and a half years ago doesn't relate to me. >> what the president tweets is what he's going to say. i spoke with somebody close to the president who said that the president has been briefed fully on the charges this morning, and the source said that the president could say later -- this was, of course, before the tweets that he feels badly for paul manafort but that this has absolutely nothing to do with the campaign and this source
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also downplayed these charges as what has been predicted and said that it goes back years as donald trump just tweeted and said that it's completely unrelated to donald trump. >> so the president's part two of his tweet this morning is simply also there is no collusion. this is someone who in march of last year, jeffrey toobin, george papadopolous, there are two separate things this morning. there are a dozen charges against two people. very serious. gates and manafort and then there's a guilty plea from someone who the president described one year ago as a member of his foreign policy team, an energy consultant and an excellent guy. >> it's very significant. also just from mueller's perspective, it is significant that he has a guilty plea. i mean, the fact that a prosecutor is working without having won any cases is something prosecutors worry about. mueller doesn't have to worry about that anymore because he has now one guilty plea.
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and as well as an indictment against two others. >> i kind it curious that we're learning information about the papadopolous thing today. obviously it was part of what was unsealed and it's wildly different than the financial crimes with paul manafort and rick gates. it makes me wonder are there more out there? or is this everything at once and there's nothing else? have they made determinations on other people that have come in that they have been truthful. something i'm curious about. gloria, i want to bring in the idea of what the administration will do in regards to robert mueller. since cnn broke the story that indictments were coming, all weekend there was speculation that donald trump will he push to piefire robert mueller? do you expect any movement on that front? >> at this point i really don't. i think the white house attorneys from my reporting are going to maintain that they're cooperating with mueller fully. that manafort is a separate
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case. as you know, the president has drawn the red line and you guys have been talking about this all morning about his own financial transactions as part of the trump organization. we see here that mueller has gone back many years in terms of manafort's finances and this question of money laundering and financial crimes, et cetera. the question is whether mueller would in fact do that with the president of the united states. as of last week -- and i'm telling you, these things are changing very quickly. as of last week, i was told that they had been given no indication that the president -- that mueller is moving into sort of the financial realm with trump and affiliates but, first of all, would they know, and secondly, would that have changed? are things that we need to
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continue to report. >> also, jeffrey toobin, phil mattingly just tweeted out something not from this indictment. different indictment against papadopolous. what we've learned now about this guy who was a foreign -- who was a consultant at least with the trump campaign on foreign affairs. was apparently arrested july 27th of this year. upon his arrival at dulles international airport following his arrest the defendant, papadopolous, met with government officials on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions. now, if this is someone who -- if this is someone who is helpful to the government, would he still have plead guilty to lesser charges? >> usually the way it works when someone is cooperating who has some culpculpability, they have plead guilty in return for suggestion of leniency by prosecutors to the judge when it comes time for sentencing.
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it sounds like that this was a cooperation agreement. he plead guilty to this crime in hopes of leniency he has been cooperating along the way. multiple meetings. and whether he has anything useful about other criminal activity from other people, we don't know at this point. obviously he has been cooperating. >> i got to say, i want to find out much more about the george papadopolous matter. one of these things is not like the other. jeffrey toobin, gloria borger, thank you so much for being with us. we're waiting to see paul manafort and rick gates as they head over to the federal courthouse in washington d.c. you can see the cameras set up outside. a 12-count indictment against these two men part of three people that we now know have been charged in connection with special counsel robert mueller's investigation.
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breaking news this morning. we have now learned that a former trump foreign policy adviser has plead guilty to making false statements to the fbi and former campaign staffers, the former chair of the campaign, paul manafort and his associate, rick gates, have been indicted on 12 counts including conspiracy against the united states. they're being pragocessed at th moment. it's nice to have you all here. top line box this morning, this is a guilty plea about lying to the fbi from one person who worked on the trump team. and a serious indictment with 12 serious counts against two others. >> very serious stuff. the most recent one is, i think, remarkable because we're talking about false statements made after the inauguration. the president, even though he tweeted this just a few minutes ago, can no longer claim this has nothing to do with the administration. this was somebody who pleaded himself. it's not as if someone is making an allegation. he says with his own mouth under oath i lied.
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i did this. i did that. and we're talking about events that happened in one case january 27th. so now we're in the administration. now we've got a guilty plea. now we've got somebody who was talking to the russians. this charge about fake news at some point people have to decide if the facts matter at all but clearly the facts here sworn to in an american court is that we have a problem here. >> george papadopolous, an adviser to the trump campaign, lied about meetings that he had with russians. lied about contacts that he had with russians and admitted to that. so what do you make of that? >> well, number one, i don't believe he's a member of the administration. if i heard correctly -- >> an adviser to the trump campaign. weigh as foreign policy adviser. and introduced by then candidate trump as a foreign policy adviser. >> and a "excellent guy."
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the president called him an excellent guy last year. >> i want to clarify he's not in the administration. there are a lot of people in the campaign who had titles that claimed a lot more than they actually did in the campaign. carter page was one of them, for example, who never met donald trump and yet was kind of painted in the press quite often as being someone very, very close to the president, but he had never met him. i don't know what george did in the campaign. he was probably a volunteer. you know, he did lie. and i think that's significant. he wasn't lying necessarily on behalf of nianybody. he was lying to protect himself suggesting the campaign meet with russia. let me say this. everything that has been been published so far shows the campaign rejected his offers and said, no, we're not going to do that. in fact, at one time sam said we don't like this at all. it looks like it's a violation of the law. i think that it's possible that
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it could stop right there. on the paul manafort stuff, that's stuff that's been under investigation for many, many years. it does not appear to have anything to do with the campaign. as staffers. >> you're saying the timeline doesn't match up. this indictment is for 2006 to 2017? it didn't end in 2013? >> it only -- but the money was really during the 2007 to 2012 era when he was working for the ukraine government and he had that infamous black ledger that was covered many times in the press in 2016 where something like $12 million was in a handwritten ledger and he had forms and bank accounts in cyprus and so forth. the fact it went beyond that was possible he was still laundering money back to the united states but the other part 2017 is when he finally, along i might add with john podesta, chairman of the hillary clinton campaign,
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his brother, tony podesta who worked with paul manafort, that's when they both actually went ahead and signed their forms showing they were working for a foreign government. that, again, was tony podesta, who i'm sure is going to be another shoe that falls very quickly as we start looking more and more into this whole thing and the question -- >> we'll see. >> the question of the dossier. today was campaign chair paul manafort who was indicted along with deputy chair of the transition rick gates and foreign policy adviser george papadopolous who pleaded guilty. what happens later we'll see. congressman israel, your reaction to the events. >> i chaired the democratic national campaign committee for four years and coached candidates and lesson one in politics avoid headlines with the words 31 page indictment and money laundering and they haven't been able to avoid this. the republicans were going into this midterm cycle facing a headwind. they now face a headwind that is strong and sustained. the fact is, if you are part of
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that 35% of the american people who love donald trump, this is the nothing burger we've heard about. but if you are a resistor and an opponent of donald trump this is like an all-you-can-eat buffet. for the coveted swing voters who has the majority in congress next year, this isn't really much of anything. they tune this out. what they want is a president focused on their paychecks, on health care, on drug abuse and national security. what they have is a president who is obsessed and consumed now with his own legal and political survival. two tweets already this morning, a tweet storm yesterday. this is really going to play to donald trump and house republicans' failure, their weakness. people want a president focusing on them not legal and political survival. i think this portends a very bumpy cycle and i can tell you already i talked to colleagues this morning, donald trump has been on the phone with republicans saying, i didn't know that the democrats were in charge of the house intelligence
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committee. and the senate intelligence committee. you guys need to up the ante. level the playing field. that's what you're going to see. >> the sad thing about this, errol, is just to the congressman's point about well if you're the 35% that love the president, this is a nothing burreller, isn't this -- this is beyond politics. this is a guilty plea of someone working lying to the fbi about working with the russian government and 12 counts including conspiring against the united states. >> yeah. >> to two other people high up. at what point is this beyond how you feel about the president? >> you raise a good point. this is an important moment for american institutions and integrity of the courts and of the congress and of the media and voters. they're in this too. people have got to decide whether or not any of this matters and i understand, you know, i mean if you go back to watergate, until very late in the game, a lot of people weren't paying attention, didn't think it was serious and all of the polling sort of bears that out. however, the events did march forward. the institutions did do their jobs.
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the system did hold and that's what we have to focus on here to make sure that what is true is put forward, that we don't chase all kinds of distraction that the presidents and others are going to throw up, don't start attacking the institutions. there's been this drumbeat of attacks on mueller and a special counsel looking into this. if that had succeeded we wouldn't have these guilty pleas or this investigation. the congressional committees have to do their job. everybody has to do their job. look the public will catch up at some point. those who want to catch up. those who don't care, well god bless them. for a lot of people, it's really serious business when according to the second indictment that was unsealed today, the guilty plea announced, somebody was meeting with russians and then felt compelled to lie about it. after the inauguration, after they had won. why did he lie? the next set of questions people will want answered. >> congressman kington i can't tell if you're trying to talk. ask you a question, i can't tell
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if you've been trying to talk about this. do you think bob mueller is doing this job? >> i think he is. peter king cautiously supportive of him, trey gowdy, he has criticism, we don't understand where he was during the uranium one deal when he was director of the fbi, why weren't there questions when there were apparently an informant who said hey, russia is trying to infiltrate this american trucking company, and i think those are legitimate questions. i have questions about his relationships with james comey, but for right now i'm going to go with trey gowdy. let me say this in terms of what counts to the american people, the stock market is at 23,000, 5 trillion new money coming into the economy because of the growth since this president has taken office, lowest unemployment rate in 16 years. a lot of things that matter to people have been delivered by this administration. during the clinton administration, there were 47
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indictments, 14 people went to jail, and yet, he was re-elected. so i think that the american people realize that if things are going well in the economy, things are going well with them these kinds of sometimes very, very political and i think we can all agree this is a political investigation, these things go on. you know, to -- >> congressman -- we want to give congressman israel. >> i can't wait. i love jack kingston but i don't know who you're talking to but the people i'm talking to are not progressing the way they want. you can agree with the nuance of a specific policy but they want a president focused on them and not his own legal and political problems. they want a president tweeting about them not him. >> thank you all very much. >> remember when -- >> congressman, we have to leave it there. >> we have to go. so much news this morning, we got to stay on it. the breaking news, paul manafort, rick gates, arrived at a federal court house and face an indictment foreign policy
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adviser to the trump campaign pleaded guilty, much more on the breaking news coming up. it's resourceful. elusive. shrewd. cancer. is. smart. it pushes us. we push back. we even push each other. to challenge conventional thinking. find smarter solutions. that's what makes us one of the leaders in precision cancer treatment. forging ahead with technology that wasn't available to cancer patients just a short time ago. like advanced genomic testing. a diagnostic tool that lets us see cancer at the molecular level. then helps us find different ways to target it. and immunotherapy, a treatment that actually makes your immune system smarter. trains it to attack the cancer in your body. this is what we live for. giving our patients compassionate care by offering them more precise and less invasive treatment options than before. that's what makes us cancer treatment centers of america. we're not just fighting cancer anymore. we're outsmarting it.
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talk to your doctor today. see if lyrica can help. ocratic national committee dnc, dnc, dnc, dnc, dnc,cratic natio dnc, dnc, dnc, dnc,tic national, dnc, dnc, dnc,national committe dnc, dnc, dnc,onal committee dn dnc, dnc,committee dnc, dnc, dn dnc,mittee dnc, dnc, dnc, dncen, . this is cnn breaking news. this is cnn breaking news. >> hello. i'm kate bolduan. 12 counts including conspiracy against the united states, money laundering and tax evasion what the president's former campaign chairman and his deputy are up against today. paul manafort and rick gates the first to be charged as part of robert mueller's investigation into russia's meddling in the 2016 election. both men surrendered to the fbi this morning and in just a little while will be facing a federal judge in washington, d.c. and that is a lot and that is not all. also b

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